Attack of the Trip Advisors

Yes I watched it and I was completely shocked at some of those 'Trip Advisors' reviews. I mean putting a pen mark on the corner of a bed sheet to see if it was changed daily WTF!! :confused:

I also felt really sorry for the couple who owned that seafood b&b even if the bloke was sligthly cookoo.
 
I watched it and all the way through thought how these "reviewers" need to get a life. I felt sorry for each and every hotelier on there. People moaning about water in the kettle, beddding not being changed each day becasue you have skin condition, come on get a life. :rolleyes:

That women that was given a invite back to the restaurant to come to an agreement about the review, thought the bloke was hilarious and genuine guy and just how he didn't throw her out like he wanted to I don't know.
 
[TW]Fox;20459621 said:
I've almost given up using Tripadvisor because of the mostly frankly pathetic and sensationalist reviews. Plenty of people going absolutely bonkers and leaving really harsh reviews as a result of either trivial problems, ridiculous expectations or things that are beyond any hoteliers control.

I almost didn't bother taking a tour to the Grand Canyon with one company because of how harsh some of the TA reviews were. It turned out to be fantastically organised and really excelent.
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I've also had the opposite experience, plenty of perfect 5 star reviews for a particular hotel/resort, presumably from those individuals/couples/families with less expectations and ended up having a bad time. Obviously having a poor experience shouldn't happen but it's hit or miss, it will happen on the odd occasion.

It's a useful tool to an extent but you shouldn't ever read into the reviews too much. I find it's generally pretty easy to judge those who are just the slandering keyboard warriors.

I'm just in and barely awake so I apologise if none of what I just said made any sense :p
 
I was explaining exactly this to my Mum a few days ago, reading over some online reviews of places to stay. The big number at the top (on this particular site) gave the overall score, but reading through comments you can see people saying "Everything was fine but the coffee was rubbish", then giving the place 20% as a result. I can see how it would affect the businesses in question, as I suspect the majority of users are more along the lines of my Mum, where ranking by score writes off those who've had a number of muppets staying there in the past.
 
I saw this. I thought the obsessive reviewers were pathetic, but I also thought *some* of the owners didn't help themselves in such situations. Especially the woman when the two men complained about the light bleeding through the window. I think she got overly defensive when she could have just taken what might have been petty, but otherwise constructive criticism and said "I'm very sorry, I'll make sure a blackout blind is put on the window" instead of responding with "what do you want me to do? Go and break their light?".
 
kylew said:
I saw this. I thought the obsessive reviewers were pathetic, but I also thought *some* of the owners didn't help themselves in such situations. Especially the woman when the two men complained about the light bleeding through the window. I think she got overly defensive when she could have just taken what might have been petty, but otherwise constructive criticism and said "I'm very sorry, I'll make sure a blackout blind is put on the window" instead of responding with "what do you want me to do? Go and break their light?".
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You're right she did get defensive.

It was the same with the lady at the end. To be fair a 1 star review probably wasn't correct but its her opinion I suppose, the problem was they sat them down and she mentioned she wanted to have a talk about it even before they had eaten and continued to mention it upon serving every course and even went as far to mention that they get more nasty people in the summer indirectly targeting that towards her.

I understand that negative reviews probably do hurt the business to an extent but it seemed the owners were just as obsessed with Trip Advisor as the obsessive couch critics :p
 
the hotel I work at uses trip adviser as one of our benchmarks. Each month we get the latest good and bad reviews posted in the staff canteen. The complaints always seem to be about the imac and the breakfast service on a weekend.

The Imac half the time people dont realise that it is switched off by the maids when they turn over the rooms and the people staying in cant find the switch at the back or they are just not computer literature.

The breakfast thing is because on a saturday and sunday 90% of the people who are staying are on a bed and breakfast rate and thats usualy about 400 people and it seems they all want to come down at the same time to eat. The Hot breakfast is straight from the kitchen so u can imagine that takes a few mins so yeah there is a wait at certain times
 
I do agree, it seemed like overall they were both way too obsessed with tripadvisor. I think the point was that the owners were getting too emotionally attached to individual reviews when it was pretty clear these people doing the reviews were jobsworths.

I think the woman at the end, who they invited back was pretty pathetic too, she didn't seem to be able to stand up to the type of criticism she gave out so flippantly. The way she got up and ran out just shows that really. I think the owners of the seafood place were being reasonable but the woman just couldn't handle their opinions it seems.
 
I used trip advisor when I booked my first significant holiday, this was about 5 years ago and the reviews for the package I was looking at were mostly excellent, with one or two complaining about... steps. Yes, that's right, in a massive resort, people were saying how terrible it was that there were steps here and there to get to the 9 different swimming pools, turns out it was obese Americans with these complaints.

Has it gotten bad because of the amount of people now using it or something?
 
Most of the time a cursory skim of the review reveals whether the writer is a mentalist or not, i.e. complaining about the lack of 5* service in a $30 a night motel :p
 
I find trip advisor excellent. I use it to check all the hotels we stay at abroad and its pretty much spot on. Yes you will get people whining on about stupid things, oddly enough its normally Americans but you just ignore those and they are normally a very small percentage of the reviews anyway.

Saying that though, I dont bother looking at it when staying in the UK and havent watched the programme yet.
 
The Grandma of the lad summed it up for me.
She said how he was bullied at school and he now as a chance to have his say.
I loved how the woman walked in with a 'I'm so important' swagger.
 
kip02 said:
That women that was given a invite back to the restaurant to come to an agreement about the review, thought the bloke was hilarious and genuine guy and just how he didn't throw her out like he wanted to I don't know.
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Really? I thought he was a monumental **** personally. His food looked ****** from the TV screen, i could tell how bad it was without even being their!
 
I do use it, it's useful when people put loads of photos up.

As many have mentioned, reviews are useful as long as you read many of them but not when taking individual ones out of context
 
I hadn't really paid attention to them before someone earlier in the thread suggested you should be able to give feedback on a review, there are the "was this review helpful" and "problem with this review" functions. I'd seen these before but hadn't noticed the number of people saying a review was helpful is at the side of them. Not sure if this is actually an indicator of how good the review is (in quality), but could be.
 
These sorts of review sites are good for consumers. It forces business to offer good or better service. The first thing a business will (should) do when they see a negative review that is justified is try to fix that problem.

I read trip advisor before going to my hotel in egypt and i learned a few things from it, not to drink the water and where not to go and things like that. But i didn't take it too seriously. Some people were saying it was a terrible hotel but i thought it was excellent.

Consumer reviews are bad for business, who would have thought?
 
Trip advisor fits perfectly with the british mentality of raising issues - namely not actually making a complaint/query, but rather moaning about it later. The problem is the moan is now not to a few friends but with the world.

The best way to raise service in hotels and particularly restaurants is to politely bring the issue to the attention of the people serving you. If you get a cold meal, just say so for gods sake.
 
dmpoole said:
I never realised how sites like Trip Adviser are putting hotels out of business with mundane reviews
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It's not. The businesses stand or fall by the quality of their service. Bad reviews will damage their reputation, but that's not Trip Advisor's fault.

How long can Britain's small businesses cope with relentless criticism before they pack it all in?
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All British hotels are small businesses? That might come as a surprise to The Ritz...
 
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